Tianjin: the sea can have it

DECEMBER 22, 2007: We reached the end of the wall with cash supplies alarmingly low but with an ever-expanding haul of Chinese products "to fall back on".

Most valuable among these were the vehicles: a near-new 3-wheeled peasant truck still under warranty and two fancy brand-name bicycles.

The former, being of terrible quality and almost certainly illegal in Australia, we decided to sell. The latter would be worth much more in Australia but were too big to be sent in the post. The solution: in one last heroic feat, our little 'trerrck' would carry the bikes down to the port to be sent by sea container. The following morning we set out for the port city of Tianjin, about 300km away.

Police regulations intended to force foreigners like us to stay in rip-off hotels ("For your own safety," went the claim) meant no decent, clean, inexpensive, law-abiding accommodation provider would accept us near the end of the Wall. Which forced us underground and into the unclean, unsafe, un-law abiding rat hole pictured above. I awoke unusually early and the urge to get out combined with some wishful mathematics brought me to the conclusion that if we left by 8 we could get to Tianjin by 3 that day.

The weather was still freezing and the highway wretched despite being relatively new. I'd like to know whose idea it was to spend millions on making a highway out of poured concrete. At nearly every intersection and through every town and village the road was literally crumbling at the joins. I'm not joking, every car that passed over the crumbling joins caused more pieces to crumble off, resulting in a highway as bumpy or bumpier than the average outback earth road - bumpy with harsh, jagged, missing-pieces type bumps. And what about constructing it? Easy, you know, just like driveways in Australia - mark each section with even pieces of wood, pour the concrete, spend hours smoothing it out and making pretty patterns - except literally 4000 times longer. I can't understand. Maybe the government was sitting on a stockpile of cement and dumped it on this highway for the sake of some friendly local cement plant bosses, i don't know.

If ever a child such as a nephew, niece or cousin asks you where those tiny matchbox trucks come from


tell them once a year the trucks of the world drive upstream for thousands of kilometres to mate and sporn in a huge frenzy next to a highway in northern China. When they complain that you're bullshitting them send them to this page. Lame.

Check out the face-off at a rail crossing. The train was about 2km long and kept everyone waiting for more than 5 minutes. As the queue jumpers piled up on the wrong side of the road, it was clear that the same would be happening on the other side of the crossing. And sure enough..


Either way, by 2 o'clock we'd only covered about 150km, and this was when i learned exactly the meaning of those ubiquitous yellow and red "DO NOT OVERTAKE TURNING VEHICLE" signs on the back of trucks in Australia and other places that aren't China. As in, i knew the principle, but never the reason behind the principle. We were on the outskirts of a medium-sized city and had come upon another very long and rather permanent looking semi-trailer jam. With no time to spare and very little movement from these normally docile beasts of burden, i weaved a course through, utilising a combination of the available roadspace and the footpath. I was steering a course between the footpath and the trucks and noticed ahead the space was about to get thinner. I slowed down to make sure we could squeeze through and we were about half way along the length of a roughly 30m-long semi trailer when i realised his soot-coated indicator lights were flashing. He was turning right, ever so slowly, into a side street i hadn't noticed. The driver, in turn, had apparently not noticed us. With the kerb roughly the same height as the front wheel, the choices were suddenly reduced to: go, fast, and hope he notices you or stop and hope he misses you. With the driver's cab already turning the corner, i chose the latter and held down the horn in the hope he'd know there was a problem. But in China, with the horn so commonplace and so ritually ignored, there is in fact no way to warn other drivers of any such real, urgent problem. He must have been going about 7km/h, but multiply that by the weight of a 30+ metre long truck, and we were smacked up from behind with an unstoppable force and a truly sickening steel-on-steel crash that cried out for those flat Kiwified words, "It's all gone horribly, HORRIBLY wrong!!!".

We were somehow propelled onto the pavement while the semi-trailer continued easing round the corner. While a few heads turned, upon seeing no mangled wreck or corpses, they turned away. But the reality is with a kerb that size we were genuinely lucky not to have bounced off it and been flipped out under the truck's wheels. For all i know, the driver might have seen us and decided not to stop based on the observance that we were just worthless peasants. It really could have gone that horribly wrong. As it was, we drove away, the 'trerrck' with a small dent and the goose with some whiplash.

We were only almost killed one other time during this carefree, 11-hour soujourn, when, on a narrow stretch of road marked "no overtaking", we were almost mown down by a carefree black Audi. He swerved onto the wrong side of the road as he approached a queue of traffic, forcing me to steer the bike down a ledge onto an extremely rough roadside dirt strip at 50km/h. One pothole or large bump in the dirt and we would have been hurled into a thick row of trees.

The destination, Tianjin, turned out to be the first Chinese city i've really disliked. Overpriced transport, overpriced accommodation, 1950s London style air pollution, unfriendly people, rip-off merchants everywhere targeting foreigners, and an inordinate number of golden arches. Have you ever heard of a bicycle traffic jam at the bicycle traffic lights?



Guess i'd been in the country too long. The streets were so poorly signposted and so tangled up in spaghetti flyovers, underpasses and roadworks that it took me an hour of utter confusion to find the inter-provincial train station to pick up our bikes. Quite the opposite of China's usual orthodontic grid cities, Tianjin's roads splay in all directions. A great many signs inform you of the roads ahead, very few tell you what road you're actually on; signs at intersections tell you which roads is in which direction - but again, none tell you which road you're on. Signs tell you what bridge you're on, but alas, not what road you're on. And signs direct you to all kinds of obvious nearby places you've already arrived at, but none point the way to such landmarks as the inter-provincial train station. Not only that, my fresh whiplash made it painful to look around and, i was told, my type of che was banned in the city. I was probably lucky to find the place after only one hour and five accostings of strangers.

But when i got to the office, the woman took my ticket, looked at it briefly then brought down a big red stamp and threw it back at me. "That address," she said, pointing at the imprint. No explanation, no directions, no help at all. I was so gobsmacked and crazy from being endlessly lost, in pain and cold for the last hour that i couldn't respond, though i went back a minute later and sprayed her.

After that there was nothing for it but drive around almost aimlessly, about every 3 minutes asking a pedestrian for directions to the stamped address. It took another hour and a good samaratan at a news stand to get me there; though i was only 150m from it, i would never have found it on my own - an unmarked warehouse tucked away behind a large stack of sea containers.

But, having obtained the bikes and - after more unexpected duress - some space in a sea container, we discovered Tianjin, the "port city", was in fact 40km from the port. Lucky we had the "che", then. Then the che lost it completely at the critical moment so we didn't have a che. After half a day trying to organise reasonably-priced transport, we ended up on a public bus with two bicycles, four suitcases, two giant 'Mikey Mouse' bags and a guitar. They charged us 50RMB for the 5RMB a person bus ride. "Why did we get on this bus?" i shouted, jumping to the conclusion we were being scammed yet again, "we could have bought seats for our luggage and it would have been half the price". But as the bus quickly filled up, my anger melted at the mere thought of 50 cranky commuters jostling in the aisle while nine large pieces of luggage occupied seats.

Driving between Tianjin and the port must surely be one of the most hazardous drives in the world:


The city's built on marshes and as soon as the buildings finished the traffic slowed to a crawl as the highway was shrouded in a thick fog. Hazard lights were the only thing stopping enormous pile-ups on the stilted road above the marshes. The driver was effectively driving blindfolded; you literally couldn't see more than 5-10 metres in front. This didn't prevent him from speeding up alarmingly whenever there were no lights in front - that is, speeding up whenever he couldn't see anything at all. He wasn't averse to using the emergency/bicycle lane. Any cyclist or 3-wheel "che" driver caught in such a situation would be run over without a doubt. When we arrived, two hours later with no hope of catching our next train, they cast us out on the side of the road, along with our 9 huge luggage items.

The following day, after six unwanted days, we were predictably keen to get on the next train back to Jilin. However, Tianjin had one last test in store for our sanity: The next morning, with hours to wait for the next train, we checked in our bags at the luggage lockers. We arrived back six minutes before the train was due to leave - too close for the average Chinese, but standard for box and goose. But the attendant was nowhere to be found. When eventually we located her, we only had two minutes to get through the ticket gates, down onto the platform and onto the train - unlikely, but still possible. "Which way?" i yelled to a railway guard. She pointed forward and left and told us to run. So we ran, turned left and went up to the gate. Locked. "Hey!" I screamed to the guards on the other side, who were nonchalantly meandering about, "hey! How do we get to the train?" One of them cocked their head, questioningly. "Do you understand me??" I yelled, red-faced and pouring sweat. "K102train!!...HOW....DO...WE...GET...TO...THE...TRAIN?!!!" i screamed, while Boxxy moaned, hopelessly rattling the gate. One of the guards came over. He slowly, agonisingly took my ticket, poured over it, and eventually pointed to his right, towards the next gate. Only then did i notice the 200 or so people waiting behind it, queued, staring in wide-eyed bemusement at the live entertainment. "Your train's late," said the guard without a hint of either annoyance or amusement.

Muertos Che

DECEMBER 19, 2007: What do a blue 3-wheeled peasant truck, a maroon 3-wheeled peasant truck, a crane, an elevator and a bicycle have in common? Photos from Hebei and Shanxi

Why, isn't it obvious?...they're all "che"s. Not viva El "Chay" Che, but "chuhhh" che. Try saying it...it's a very addictive sound once you start, at least that proved the case with this small mind. But that's fine because in China, any 'wheeled vehicle' is a "che". In fact, it doesn't even need to have wheels (crane, elevator etc.), pretty much any machine that moves and is not a boat is a "che".

So, with "che"s all the rage among the upwardly-mobile Chinese peasantry, what exactly should the aspirational farmer expect from his brand new 3-wheeler - after he follows the face of China's biggest film star, Gong Li, down to his local 'Big Sun 3 Wheel' dealer? Here's a glimpse of the fascinating dramas that might just pan out in the first 2500km of his che's working life:
- Punctured front tyre (before leaving the showroom).
- Front brake doesn't work (dealer's comment: "oh, they're all like that, even the expensive ones").
- Handlebars snap off (day 2. Dealer repairs promptly).
- Reverse lights don't work (luckily there's a looped recording of a chipmunk squeaking, "PLEASE...NOTICE....CHE" instead).
- Speedometer stops working (but he's repaid for this because the odometer is linked to it, thus extending his 6000km warranty indefinitely).
- Brake lights don't work (thankfully, the brakes are so weak that it doesn't matter).
- Indicators stop working.
- Rear vision mirror screw thread breaks, rendering mirror useless.
- Engine cover comes loose (due to fearful rattling about 45km/h).
- Gearstick - metal gearstick - snaps off, leaving him stuck in fourth gear. (It happens on a pitch dark road in the freezing cold and he won't even realise until he's made it home, whereupon he'll have to search the road for more than an hour and only find it when he runs it over, partially destroying it.)
- The usually weak, ineffectual brakes suddenly lock up completely, without warning. He'll have a mechanic look at it, who won't understand the problem. He'll continue on his way and by the time he stops at the next workshop, the problem will have disappeared. But he'll be terribly worried because it's been snowing and there's copious ice on the roads and he knows if it happens when he's on the ice he will be, well, probably fucked. The next day will pass uneventfully until he hits a sudden rough patch in a black tunnel and screech uncontrollably to a halt with traffic behind him. By some miracle he'll survive and the next mechanic he shows it to will recognise that a large bolt holding the rear axle in place has fallen off.


- He'll decide to sell this "che" and return to the dark ages. But three kilometres from the buyer's place, it will shudder to a halt on a busy city intersection. He'll push it clear and find a mechanic. He'll push the "che" 2km to the workshop, where the mechanic will take it apart, piece by piece, until, after completely dismantling the engine, he identifies the problem as a very critical gear cog, completely worn out. He'll ring his supplier...but the peasant will have driven too far - he's out of "Big Sun 3 Wheel's sphere of influence! Here it's all 'Big Capital 3 Wheel'. As such his 6000km warranty will be completely useless and the spare part 3-4 days and a large sum of money away. Exactly thirty-five days after he rushedintoyourlocaldealertograbasuperdealtoday and purchased this che for 46 Chairman Maos, he'll sell it to the mechanic for 10. He'll leave it in 1000 different pieces. But he'll be alive.

But not necessarily. The second-last problem (the brakes locking up) was an atrociously dangerous one. Through the last week or so, every road had large patches of thick, smooth ice. If we happened to be on one of them when the brakes locked up, we really would have stood little chance against the traffic and/or mountain slopes. It was Boxxy's birthday. The only redemption is that China's a relatively good place to be brake-less, as drivers here tend to use the horn instead of brakes, and the obstacles are accordingly nimble as a result. As if driving on ice itself wasn't bad enough. All the roads except the highways were 90% covered in ice for 2 or 3 days after the snow. Especially the winding mountain roads. On the downhill parts, engine braking is the only way to slow down. If you can add the tiniest bit of braking, you can slow down, but the second you brake too much the wheels will lock up and you end up in the disconcerting position of having to release the brake if you want to slow down at all.

And the journey...


Our welcome to the final province, Hebei, was long, enthusiastic and very strange - thanks to one man: Master Zhao, pictured above. This guy spends all his spring, summer and autumn holiday time hiking along the Great Wall, solo. We met him randomly in his town, Chicheng ("Bare Wall"), and very mundanely - he saw us unloading the bags and came over to investigate. He insisted on taking us to dinner even though we didn't know him, so we paid and slipped out to check our email. When we got back to the hotel he was waiting for us, maggotted on baijiu and almost crying with joy to see us because he was "so worried" - evidently having forgotten my telling him we were going to 'shang the wang' (go on the internet). He invited himself up to our hotel room, ostensibly to make plans for a trip to some remote section of the wall the following day, but between primping my hair, inviting a drunken Communist Party boss to join us (who danced and sing and then passed out onto Boxxy, spilling burning tea all over her and her book, and then left), giving sudden massages to me and the Party goon, commenting on how "beautiful" i was, and posing for photos when i returned the complement (e.g. the one above), little planning was done.

Chinese men either put on a brave face for their toxic hangovers; at 7.30 sharp he was bashing on the door, bearing breakfast. At the service station a businessman on a scooter pulled up behind us just as the attendant finished serving a customer, got her attention by waving money and both proceeded to ignore my angry assertion that "we were next". Master Zhao was smiling - i asked if this would annoy him. "Yes," he replied, adding by way of explanation, "but he saw your 'che' and thought you were a peasant." When we reached, an hour or so later, what appeared to be the Great Wall, i went to park the che but no, said Master Zhao, 5 more kilometres. Here the road turned from surfaced to sand, then to a rocky river bed masquerading as a road that was so bumpy both Zhao and Boxxy had to get out and walk, so violently were they being thrown about. It wasn't a big problem as i could barely drive above walking pace anyway. After half an hour we came upon a group of 4 or 5 houses. The residents were busy dismembering a pig and clearly had no idea what we were doing. But another half an hour after asking them for directions, Mr Great Wall Master seemed to have lost the way. No sign of any Wall and at least 8km since he'd said 5km to go, with plenty of terrible road laid out in front. Here the road climbed a water channel on the side of a mountain that looked how i imagine Kurdistan or some other barren, mountainous, snowy, cold, utterly godforsaken place. About half way up the hill the ridge that constituted the road i was driving on ended and i had to cross to the other side of a water channel. As i was doing this the engine suddenly yelped like a dog being stung by a bee and suddenly i was standing with one foot on the ground, holding the che as it tried to roll, only my left leg between it and the bottom of the valley. No superman feat, however, the thing's so light that i was able to right it without any trouble at all. After crawling down the other side and through a village where animal shit and feed formed the road, we still hadn't seen any sign of impending Wall. As the narrow road skirted the hillside above a small gorge, suddenly there in front was a thick, slippery glacier that sloped gently across the road to the edge, then plummeted straight down into the gorge. Zhao recklessly told me to drive across it; i could only imagine half way across the wheels would lose grip and slide, slowly, slowly, towards the edge. We'd all jump out in time and try to stop it but agonisingly wouldn't get any grip on the smooth ice and the che would slide ever so gently over over the edge, roll three times and be wrecked at the bottom - 15 agonising kilometres from the nearest road. No, Master Zhao, no, we'll spend half an hour making a road across. And then we'll get there, walk through the magical snowy pine forest where the snow is untouched despite being weeks old and has a pine flavour.

This part of the wall appeared to be rocks, piled on top of each other. The Wall generally speaks for itself but Hebei and Beijing have by far the most spectacular Wall there is. So if you happen to want to see pictures, what i think are the recent decent ones are here.


After leaving Master Zhao behind we hit the Beijing area. That's the chunk of countryside extending 50-100km out from the actual Beijing. Surprisingly enough, being located close to one of the most polluted cities in the world, it's clearly the best countryside we travelled through in China. Mountains, birds' nests in the tree-lined roads, yadda yadda. The roads are excellent, and the road signs plentiful:


But strangely the Beijing authorities were stricter towards us - and the general population - than anywhere else. It's the only place i was ever asked for my licence; there are police check points at unexpected intervals, every single hotel required recording the details of both of our passport details before we could stay. Worst of all, in a place called "Pingu Area" (the following day's destination was "Bambi Mountain"), a small inn run by an old couple let us unpack, eat dinner, undress and almost sleep before telling us we couldn't stay due to some regulation that said foreigners can't stay in cheap hotels. You'd expect the most open part of China to be more open. Perhaps it is open to foreigners and we don't count. People around here have probably seen enough foreigners to know that they don't drive around in peasant trucks...what is it the WA Police call it..."probable cause"?

The Beijing government has rebuilt quite a few of the best parts of the wall for tourist purposes, none of which we visited. Far more interesting - horrific, some would say - was the part where they appeared to have started rebuilding and abandoned it half way through because they were fucking it up so badly.


A bunch of tourist-aimed businesses and aggressive sellers remain to pounce on the wayward traveller as they read the "Wall close strictly fobit climb" sign - and move on.

And on the last day it was all over. We drank beers on the end of the Wall. The one in the tin tasted good. The one in the bottle tasted bad. It would have been at sunset but the sun was already behind a thick cloud of smoke.
________________

Don't mess with the mountains of Mongolland....

DECEMBER 1, 2007: Welcome to coal country in winter. Most of the countryside here in north-central China is cloaked in thick brown smoke at least 20 hours a day. Locals like to claim it's "humidity" but the clear air in the few places where there are no people is all the evidence i need (aside from the fact that it's obviously smoke). Photos from Shanxi and Shaanxi

The blanket will hang around for about the next 4 months, given it's now sub-zero day and night and practically everybody burns coal to stay alive. If the Yellow River is the giver and taker of life elsewhere, coal is the giver and taker of life in north-central China. The roads here are so dominated by coal trucks that some poor souls manage to stay warm by walking along the road and collecting the small pieces they drop. The plants close to the road live and die in coal dust and the roads leading to and from the mines are coal dust roads. And have you ever been stopped at a railway crossing for 5 minutes by one of those endlessly long trains? When we crossed from Shaanxi Province into Shanxi Province (yes, two different provinces, same pronunciation in English) we had to navigate around a nose-to-tail traffic jam of giant coal trucks the right lane of the highway that stretched over 20km back from the border. I am not exaggerating - nose-to-tail, more than 20km long, and only very occasionally moving, crawling, a few metres forward. There's a whole economy based on this permanent coal-and-metal snake, the result of a requirement that each truck be weighed before it crosses a bridge at the border.


The coal has even managed to give me a "makeover" in its own image. Day after day, i have looked in a mirror and was shocked to see an eyeshadow-clad emo staring back. Not only that, i've been waking up in the morning with black nuggets of reconstituted coal in the corners of my eyes instead of sleep.

Speaking of which, in Fugu, or "Prefecture of Grain" (where not a grain of grain is to be seen, only coal) i awoke in the middle of the night convinced that the hotel would burn down. This outrageous premonition, however, was immediately supported by a terrifying raft of evidence. The place was very warm and very cramped. Our tiny room was surrounded by 5 or 6 others. Through the paper thin - combustible - walls (effective at stopping noise like a sieve stops water) came a regular clicking of lighters. I had looked into most of the other rooms - cupboards would be a more apt description - and none had any furniture other than beds. So people all around were definitely smoking in bed. One exit. No fire alarms. And then the clincher: i went to the toilet downstairs near the exit...the only exit...and found it blocked by a steel door, padlocked shut. Average, China.

In truth, compared to the supposedly dirt-poor places we've been before, this part of China has little respect for average lives. Despite being relatively rich statistically - due mainly to coal - people here live, work and breathe in filth. While in Gansu and Ningxia most people have their own walled compound (country) or Soviet apartment (city), people here live mostly in hillside grottoes (country) or stinking, crumbling alleys (town and city).


The area is full of historical relics and many towns and villages have ancient city walls either within or nearby. People often make their homes in them:



Datong ("Big Alike") is a big, big city with more than its fair share of palacial hotels and black Audis. But off any of the flashy main streets you find squalor - even right in the centre centre.

Since obtaining the peasant truck there's been less excuse to divert from the original brief of taking the closest road to the Great Wall. So what happens when you follow such a ridiculous idea too closely?

Around here the Wall marks the border of Inner Mongolia, the large chunk of what was traditionally Mongolia that China now rules. (The Mongols can't complain of course, having taken over China a few centuries ago.) As usual, my two maps of the area didn't agree on which roads did and didn't exist. So when i pulled out the map of Inner Mongolia and saw a nice, straight road running right alongside the Wall for 50km, it was clearly the time for a Mongolian adventure.

It started well: the road was new and flat. But after about 10km we were heading in the wrong direction so i asked a peasant for directions. He sent me back where we'd came, looking for a turn-off we hadn't seen just past a bridge we hadn't seen. With help from another peasant we eventually identified the turn-off, a rough, rough sandy track that led us quickly into the most picturesque rural setting i've ever seen - ploughed-up fields everywhere, chickens, ducks, pigs rummaging through rubbish piles, tethered sheep, chained dogs, donkeys with carts moping next to mud and straw walls while peasants thresh corn or dig holes or warm their hands on wood fires. It's all a big mocking irony of the Wall: the land outside it is noticeably better than inside. It probably has a lot to do with the large population it protected.

Anyway, as i said, the map indicated one long, straight road. What we found, in this agrarian fairyland, was a very large number of very similar-looking roads criss-crossing one another. And "villages" here (and in China proper) are not singular dots as they are marked on the map but usually are several groups of houses spread around a valley or over a hill so you never know when you've reached the next dot. This was, to begin with, a mere annoyance: ask another peasant "Are we here yet? Is it left? Or right?" Right, they tell you, but the road looks suspect. It's slightly smaller than the one you're on, has no recent tyre tracks, and cuts between two fields. You follow it anyhow but it simply takes you into a small leafless forest and fades away after 5 minutes so you turn around and go back and you want to shake your fist at the peasant but as you drive past her she asks you if you've seen her sheep. The question is so quaint that it melts your heart and you smile and tell her no, you haven't seen any sheep up that way.

More and more wrong turns precede more and more consultations with bemused peasants. Eventually, by a process tantamount to trial and error, you're alone again, climbing a grassy mountain and you hope there are no more junctions ahead. But there are and you waste time exploring several more dead ends. The day wears on and by 4.30 the sun is setting and you're on top of a mountain and you still have, you guess, 10km to the nearest proper road. Then, after an unbelievably rocky stretch, a peasant tells you you're going the right way and you spot a blue 3-wheeled truck ahead and "Ah," you think because it's the first one you've seen since this little adventure began, "we'll follow him all the way to the highway." And after about 15 minutes he takes a strange turn, left a crossroads, ("i thought we were on the right track"), and you follow him anyway, waving to try to get his attention to ask him where he's going but he's in front of you and doesn't see you or doesn't want to stop and instead keeps going faster which puts a lot of dust in your eyes. Eventually 2 guys coming the opposite way on a motorbike set you straight - back the way you came and go straight where the blue truck turned left. Now you're getting anxious with darkness closing in and you're thrashing the shit out of your fragile little 3-wheel scooter/truck and poor Boxxy in the back howls as she is flung against the side of the truck with every painful bump on the rough rough road while you think about how royally a mechanical failure would fuck you up, here atop a mountain where? in Mongolia but precisely, you don't know and it's getting very very cold. You've gotten a few hundred metres past the crossroads when you come across another village but this time there's more than the usual loose dogs to worry about. The villagers are in the process of building a kind of drainage or irrigation ditch, right across the road. The thought flashes through your mind that the last remaining untried direction at the crossroads might be some kind of detour or ring-road around this tiny village or part of a village. No way, you think, and frantically seek a villager to set you straight for what must be the 15th time. "You can't get across", he says. "Can i carry it across?" you reply rhetorically and he stays out to help you. You're just about to attempt this when he suddenly remembers he has wooden planks inside and goes and gets them for you and you get across with your wheeled vehicle only falling into the ditch once. Evidently not too many "wheeled vehicles" pass through here. And 20 minutes later you make one final wrong turn, based on nothing but a whim. And it turns out to be a shortcut, and you've found the highway and you will live tonight.

(But not before a one-hour ride at 50km/h in -10 degrees which equates to -22 degrees with wind chill and leaves you with no option, you feel, but to shriek classic popular songs out at the top of your voice in both volume and pitch. It genuinely warms you a bit.)

The dream/nightmare is over

NOVEMBER 21, 2007: When you're on a Chinese bicycle journey riding on dump-truck infested roads and one of you keeps getting dizzy every time you try to ride, you know what that means, right? You don't? It means it's time to buy a Chinese peasant truck! Photos

The bicycles have been phased after 1557km. In their place stands a noisy, 0.1-litre 3-wheeler that we bought brand new for A$770. It's freezing cold on the front, rough as a Guangdong hair lackey (thanks for the heads up Kenty) in the back where Boxxy, like all peasant women, sits. Its 4.8KW motor powers it up to a maximum speed of 60km/h, but only if you can stand the fearful rattling that kicks in above 45. It's really just as well though, because despite being brand new this thing has practically no brakes. Its front wheel brake is unashamedly token - at the shop i complained that it didn't work and the salesman simply told me, "they're all like that". The rear brakes have an unbelievably slim margin between not slowing the car at all and locking up completely. In short, it's a real stunner.

So stunning, in fact, that we can now ride around wherever we please and not be stared at: being the same maroon colour as all the rest of the poor peasantry's transportation (the rich peasantry have blue trucks), the people's eyes just sort of glide over us. It's fantastic.

The worst thing about buying the "trerk", as we refer to it, was being stuck in Jingbian ("Refined Side") for 4 days. Right in the middle of north Shaanxi, Jingbian's a messy, overgrown town where the people are generally unfriendly. As often is the case in unfriendly places, everyone seems either to be mean (40%), afraid (45%) or exceptionally warm-hearted (15%). A large number, maybe a majority, don't speak or understand Standard Mandarin. Standard Mandarin, in case you didn't know, is the dialect of Beijing, which has been implemented as a common language for the whole country. The dialect of Songyuan and the rest of the northeast (Pirate-speak) is very similar to Standard - the main difference would appear to be extra piratifications - and my friends in Songyuan warned me that i would not be able to understand anything the people in Gansu (where we started the trip) said. Funnily enough, throughout Gansu and Ningxia, two of the furthest-flung regions of China, most if not all people could speak and understand Standard. It's only been since we got into Shaanxi - the closest we've come to Beijing - that the unintelligible dialects have kicked in. Here people often exclaim, "You speak the common language!" - as though they expected me to speak some regional dialect spoken across an area the size of metropolitan Perth.

So, not a minute too soon, we hit the road from Jingbian. Our welcome to the world of Chinese motoring consisted of nearly dying in a head-on collision 5 minutes after starting when a truck heading the opposite way decided to swerve onto the wrong side of the road, apparently so as to not slow down as he turned a corner.

Our "soft-and-gay" abandonment of bicycles was promptly rewarded, however, as we headed up, up and up, into spectacular canyon country. At regular intervals along this road, as it skirts the massive, sheer cliffs, are missing and sheared-off concrete barriers, the sight of which prompted me to drive at a cowardly low speed.


Back down on the flats, we flew along (40km/h) for about half an hour before we hit more canyons. New roads go straight over them on giant stilts.


But old roads go down one side and up the other. After creeping down and struggling up through several gorges, we reached a crossroads that wasn't supposed to be. I asked a peasant where the roads went and his reply was utterly indecipherable. In fact, given the abovementioned dialect situation, his reply may well have been, "I don't understand your foreign language". I pulled out the map...and was dismayed to discover that he couldn't read either. We turned around and headed back through the canyons. This represented the first real test of the bike, as apparently the slopes had been steeper on the down-side, which was now the up-side. (Confused? Me too. Yes, we were indeed lost.) Two-thirds of the way up what was surely a 30-degree incline, the bike simply stopped. I jettisoned Boxxy, put it in neutral, rolled back down the hill and took a run-up. On this occasion we were lucky. But this particular part of the country was not finished with us yet. When i finally found a person with whom to communicate, he informed me the road marked on two different maps didn't exist and we instead must take a much longer route involving 5 more massive hills. Each one had to be scaled entirely in first gear, and on two more occasions the bike couldn't make it and needed Boxxy to get out and push. Needless to say i've quickly become a master of hill-starts.

Eventually, however, we reached a civilised road that, in a genuinely inspired show of ingenuity, ran along the bottom of an especially large canyon, all the way to the next town, Hengshan ("Unrestrained Mountain" - probably not the real meaning as this Heng character has 2 pronunciations and 7 meanings but this is my selection) which lies at the bottom. With the temperature hovering around 2 degrees, the town's coal stoves had filled the canyon with smoke. Hengshan proved to be the most poverty-stricken place we've been in China - riding in with the darkness, mist and smoke enfolding, the place looked closer to Kinshasa than Xi'an. We retuned at the most inappropriate time (in the morning) to take pictures; here is Hengshan, basking in sunshine and crisp air.


Continuing in the spirit of inappropriateness, Yulin, the next city, whose name means "Elm Forest", rises from a treeless sandy desert. I wouldn't be surprised if there once was an elm forest there, however. Northern China, to paraphrase the blog of some sterling fools who walked the length of the Great Wall, is an ecological disaster, and has been for centuries. There's no visible wildlife at all and no trees that haven't been planted by humans for human purposes.


Quite a number of Yulin's population will be talking for a while of a strange intervention by two very strange foreigners. As i was getting the 3-wheeler's oil changed, about 10 or so young men sprinted past, shouting about something. I thought they were running away from something until one was promptly tackled into some bushes and kicked in the head. "Thief?" i asked the mechanic, who nodded. But he wasn't. As we drove away about 20 minutes later, we noticed a crowd standing around watching as the 'thief', on his back, convulsed. Apparently the People's Court was carrying out its sentence. "What would they do if we just went in there and started comforting him?" Boxxy asked. "Let's find out," i replied, "he's probably going to die." We stopped the truck and ran into the circle. I put him on his side and asked if anyone had called an ambulance, while Boxxy held his hand. There were murmurs, some people tried to stop us, and the crowd quickly doubled in size. People tried hard to explain to us why we shouldn't help him. I didn't understand beyond (i think) the claim that he was acting, but he was clearly drunk and even more clearly bleeding from the head. I replied by asking, "What evil has he done?" (in those words - i don't know the word for 'crime'), to which a few people tried to reply. After lengthy explanations, all i could ascertain was that he had trashed a table in a nearby restaurant. After about a minute he started grabbing Boxxy, repeating over and over, "You saved me! You saved me!" which the crowd found very amusing. About 10 minutes later, he got up and walked off at a fine clip. All this despite the fact members of the crowd had claimed no ambulance was needed because the police were coming to arrest him.

The way from Yulin to Shenmu, ("God Tree", our present location), was first spectacular...



(Unfortunately for both the reader and my pretensions to photography, the above photo does this gorge no justice at all.)

...then it was bumpy, sandy and very dark. However, driving up sandy dune roads at night proved much less dangerous than the highway, which was so smoky that i couldn't use the high beams, and could barely see the road at all. Everyone else on the road could, though - Chinese drivers seldom turn their high beams off.

This morning we were confronted with this spectacular parade going right past our hotel. So we overtook them and took lots of pictures of their colourful get-up as they eased past.


The final car in the parade turned out to be a hearse.

"What's my cat gonna do now?"

NOVEMBER 12, 2007: "What's my cat gonna do now? He's not gonna know whether to eat, shit, piss or bake!" Photos Ningxia, Shaanxi (Xi'an)

Xi'an, mega-city of squeaky clean pavements, atrocious air and hordes of foreigners. The above quote was the centrepiece of a night-making backpacker altercation between two drunken pommy dingbats and an grey-headed, moustachioed American whose name's not being Randy surely stretches the fabric of time and space.

The Xi'an backpackers charges the same price for one bed in a massive dorm as we were paying for an en-suite room in a small hotel. But its bar food and drinks were cheap. Randy (we'll be calling him that for entropy's sake), Randy was loud and loose. We'd seen him start drinking while we had lunch and when we returned to hit the booze 8 hours later he was exactly as we'd left him, prowling around, loudly playing games of pool against himself. So we settled in on some couches to watch him embarass the fat, intelligent American sitting behind us. This was providing good, cheap light entertainment - until suddenly from the direction of the stairs came a chaotic crunching, dragging noise along with the unmistakable sound of whooping, and in crashed these two clueless poms, laden with tattered bags. As they reached the pool table the long, long sports bag one of them was carrying tore open completely, and a torrent of various grainlike products poured out onto the floor. CDs, french sticks, a large metal bowl and various other flotsam followed. The poms giggled for about 10 seconds and then stopped. Randy was silent, but rapidly turning a discernable purple. The stuff was his - why the poms had been carrying it i don't know. Eventually he spoke. "You guys...you guys are my friends, and i love ya, but you really don't know how.......i'm pissed," he said, addressing his luggage strewn across the floor. He repeated this several times, louder each time, raising his head slowly until he was facing the two oafs, who could only bleat piteously, "i'm sor-rayy, sair-riously."

"You're gonna pay," boomed Randy, having dropped the "i love you" and "my friends" references on the second and third repetitions respectively.

The clearly disturbed Chinese staff attempted to drown interest in the sideshow by turning the music up full, but the PA system was no match for the roar of a wounded Randy. His anger increased steadily and before long he was rampaging after one of the poms, who fled hilariously, skipping around the room, hurdling low walls and tables like a gazelle being chased by a lion. As Randy reached his tattered sports bag, he stopped, stooped, picked it up and slowly poured the remaining contents (about twice what had already come out) on to the floor. "Come and take a look at this!" he shouted at the gazelle, who was watching from the temporary safety of the next room. The gazelle shook its head. "You have GOT to come and take a look at this!" pleaded Randy. "I got cat litter in the cat bowl, i got brownie mix mixed up with cat food...what's my cat gonna do now?" he demanded, looking around at everyone in the room. "He's not gonna know whether to eat, shit, piss or bake!"

"No, you're gonna pay," Randy refrained, moving towards the gazelle, who began another loop of the room. "I've got a 10pm train, and YOU GUYS are gonna go to the bank and get me 600RMB for this stuff." The poms weren't keen. It went on for some time, during which Randy kept increasing the amount and the poms could only respond that they would "wark e owwt". After about 15 minutes Randy was demanding 1000RMB. And all of a sudden, the poms were going...apparently to withdraw money. The intelligent fat American, who the whole time had looked ready to curl up into a tight, wobbly ball of shame, took the opportunity to slink out (slink is the wrong word), and the atmosphere returned to one of relative calm. But before long Randy was back in the spotlight, shouting down the phone. Apparently the poms had done a runner on him, gambling that he would catch his train despite not having his invaluable haul of cat products. This time, however, Randy kept his cool. He calmly walked into the neighbouring room and, in full view of all the staff and customers, picked up two two girls' handbags and stuffed them into his (last remaining) intact bag. The poms' Chinese girlfriends' bags, he explained, and walked out.

Ahh whitey. And for all he does to disgrace himself, the caucasian and human races, the kinder the city of Xi'an is to him. Clubs, fast food, western restaurants, supermarkets, bars, tourist attractions, translators, signs in English - Xi'an is the most westernised place i've been to in China, including Beijing. We've been staying in this awesome "village" - it's been consumed by the city and is now five to six storeys high but the village vibe somehow remains in the blade-thin alleyways. There's an outdoor (cooked) food market that rumbles 24hrs right outside our door.


But, so predictably, Xi'an not exactly as kind to its locals. On Tuesday this 10-storey scaffold collapsed onto a usually-busy sidewalk. It apparently only injured three workmen, although one guy told me it killed "quite a few" people...as long as those people were workers and not passers-by that's possible. (Passers-by would very likely be rich, workmen poor.) Unbelievably, you heard it first here - there've been no (English) news reports about it so far. A few hours later the workmen were slaving away clearing up the mess. Here's a place, Joe McDonald, where you're actually needed! Your wobbly, rolling gait and figure would fit right in here, too, among the hordes of wobbly rollers. For here in "communist" China, it appears class conflict is strong - a rich Chinese dude at the backpackers bar told us he didn't know or care to know anything about the incident only 400m down the road "because in China the rich don't care about the poor and the poor don't care about the rich". As Boxxy rightly points out, that's precisely the attitude behind the appalling safety standards that lead to thousands of horrific work deaths each year. Just a couple of examples of massacres (30+ dead) in the last six months: death by molten aluminium, roasted alive in a factory fire, gassed, incinerated or buried alive in coal mine.

So we're in Shaanxi Province now, only 2 more after this. It's statistically poorer than Ningxia, though richer than Gansu, but this includes Xi'an, and Xi'an is A.) very rich and B.) contains, with its 8 million, more than 20% of the province's population:



And momma, do they lerrrve the Walmart in Xi'an.


It's got surely the best maintained city wall in the world, 12 metres high and about 12km long, though that doesn't seem to help the people's relatively sombre disposition.




The same idea seems to have been attempted with the Great Wall where it reaches the Yellow River just outside Yinchuan in Ningxia. The execution, however...


Ningxia, like Gansu before it, left its worst until last. The last four days of riding were nothing less than terrifying. The road was home to an almost constant stream of massive quarry trucks that are all of half the road wide. It had no emergency stop lane, so whenever there was traffic going in both directions (which was about 40% of the time), we had to either slide off the road or stop completely.

On the second day out of Yinchuan, after 13km of steep up-and-down (and a return of the associated teleport effect), we came upon Shui Dong Gou ("Water Cavity Gully"), a site of archaeological discoveries like cave man tools, ancient animal bones and a Ming Dynasty army labyrinth. This was cool, especially the labyrinth, so we thought we'd take a look for about half an hour. Unfortunately we didn't factor in that "Water Cavity Gully" is in fact a gorge and, as such, doesn't have many exits. Once we bought the ticket we were locked in for a two-hour hike/boat/donkey ride. It was 5pm when we left, without a hope of getting to our destination and only a vague hope of getting to a place to stay at all. Sure enough it got dark. But this didn't mean any fewer trucks. A desperately bad time ensued, first being scared shitless that the trucks wouldn't see us, then walking the last 4km in pitch dark. Worse still, it was a steep downhill slope that we could've cruised down had we been an hour earlier. Instead we had to restrain the bikes as we walked, stopping to turn and watch as each mega-truck came past.

The following day on the same road, high winds took to trying to blow us into the path of the oncoming trucks. It was blatantly too dangerous so we jumped on the back of a truck to the next major road, which had a stopping (ie bicycle) lane...for about 80 metres. Then back to sharing the road with the quarry trucks. Heckling the truck drivers for being so "soft and gay" as to drive trucks instead of cycling probably got us through the day. Boxxy got into the spirit, heckling some kind of highway patrol (i didn't think of this) for their "soft and gay" highway.


But Ningxia did at least drop us a final bone, with two Great Walls (Ming and Qing) running parallel for about 50km. The Ming Wall (older) is mainly gone, but its watchtowers remain. This was one of them.

Losing the plot in Yinchuan

OCTOBER 25, 2007: Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia, home of hospitals that look like casinos, and home of Chinese Islam, is a happy facilitator of days on end of debauched pig-eating and alcohol swilling.Photos

The place has an all-you-can-eat/all-you-can-drink pizza/pasta/Chinese/fried chicken/beer/anything-else-you-can-name-that-is-unhealthy-and-Western restaurant. Oh how the locals love it. It's like Pizza Hut all-you-can-eat in the mid 90s, only with beer, fried chicken and chips included. We met some Indian medical students who've been studying here for a year. One of them, Asi, summarised rather aptly the situation of the Hui Muslims here in the Hui Muslim Self-Governing Region: "They're very quiet, keep to themselves," he said. Here you must imagine a thick, barely decipherable Indian accent. "In my country, Muslims are veddy dangerous, setting off bombs and things. But here, the government can . . ." cocks his hand in shape of a pistol, "shoot."

Last night was an unexpected blinder of baijiu, whisky and beer in the tiny, unclean restaurant next to our tiny, unclean hotel. Drinking from metal bowls was surely the highlight.


For anyone interested in the visual side, i have been running a bit of an experiment with the $3 op shop camera i've loved for so long. The thing has now deteriorated to such an extent that it leaks sunlight. So i've had it on the front of my bike, exposed to the sun and ready to take impromptu photos from on the bike. Some of the results have been quite interesting:



Click here if you care to see more of Ole Trusty's handiwork.

And there are NEW PRODUCTS! yes NEW PRODUCTS!! on offer right here, everything from 'Tumor Hospital' adverts to the worst logo in the history of advertising. Rush in now to grab your free belly laugh at the expense of China and its obsession with your language.

We managed to avoid morale-sapping tourism for the first four days, but yesterday we caved. I really don't like going to tourist sites, no matter how interesting or historical they might be. Seriously, seeing some great historical place whilst keeping to a path that someone else has set for you and which everyone else who goes there treads, it saps my will to live. I'm not saying tourist spots shouldn't exist - plenty of people seem to like them. But really, what can't you find out about a famous tourist site that's not on the internet? Being in almost any designated tourist spot, unless it's spectacular scenery, genuinely saps my will to live. I'll leave it at that.

The lack of appeal of tourism caused me to teeter on the brink of addiction to the English-language TV propaganda channel run by the immaculately-named 'CCTV'. It usually maintains an air of 'BBC impartiality' by limiting itself to the trivial and superficial. Their reports resemble, in Boxxy's words, those of Totally Wild or Behind the News. But the day the Dalai Lama was awarded the congressional medal, it lapsed into hilariously brazen propaganda. There was none of the usual childish, cliched camerawork and earnest explanations of the bleeding obvious. In fact, the report contained no pictures or explanations at all. Instead? A three-minute Powerpoint slideshow containing nothing but blocks of text from the Chinese government's official response condemning the Dalai Lama, narrated by an expressionless, anonymous voiceover. It must have been hard for the newsreader to keep a straight face as she introduced the follow-up – "The Tibet Autonomous Region's leader today announced strong development in all areas. . .", which concluded with the reporter stating, "Tibet has always been an inaliable part of China. Mr Chocog [or something, the 'leader'] says the Dalai Lama should . . .", just seconds after a voiceover had stated, "Tibet has been a part of China since the 13th century."

Yinchuan has also been the site of two rather hilarious comic scenes involving a wild-eyed male bicycle tourist. The first was simply a harrowing haircut.

It was supposed to be a day of complete individual freedom – open ended, perhaps involving long stints in guitar shops, reading news, taking photos. I should add here the background that a lightning strike the previous day had turned my hair a dark brown colour, a lightning strike prompted and encouraged by a certain Boxx Head sick of being stared at, slack-jawed, everywhere she went on account of walking alongside a foreign man with 'yellow' hair sprouting from his head.

So the newly crowd-colour-headed foreigner entered the hairdresser's and requested a regulation snip-snip, his first for 7 months. The hairdresser snipped ok. It looked a bit shit, mainly due to her obsession with plastering his hair across to one side in the style of a Lego man, so he asked someone to pass him his dictionary and looked up the Chinese for 'neat'. "It's okay but i don't want it so neat," he said. Vexed looks all round - from the hairdresser and her troupe of fashionista cronies occasionally assisting but mainly just watching. The foreigner repeated, "I don't like neat." Thinking his dictionary was being unreliable again, he looked up 'messy' and relayed that. The fashionistas evidently saw this as some kind of opening or invitation and began piling pressure on him to undertake a service they called 'burning' or 'scorching' or some similar meaning. He told them he didn't want any special styling services, that he wanted only to not to have neat hair. The fashionista juggernaut slipped a gear: among the dozens of explanations and pieces of advice spoken in a very pure hairdressing dialect, the foreigner only understood one: "You'll feel very good." The insecurities apparent in the fashionistas' meticulous hairstyles (the owner of the store himself gelled his hair twice while the foreigner sat there) began to infect the foreigner. For a good 20-25 minutes there was utter confusion; foreigner in the chair with freshly cut and plastered brown Lego man hair, not understanding a word as the fashionistas took turns in gabbling instructions in Hairdresserese while the hairdresser stood back with scissors in hand. The only way out, it seemed to the foreigner, was to accept this 'scorching'. Which, it turned out, involved sitting in the chair with his hair in rollers for nearly an hour and a half. Yes, rollers, and a heat halo above his berollered head. Overall, the process took the best part of three hours, the foreigner sitting in the chair in front of a mirror the entire time. This alone was enough to permanently damage his psyche, but as the rollers came out and the hairdresser spruced up his new hairstyle it became apparent to him that the result was a ridiculous cross between a Marge Simpson beehive and a fluffy Jew-fro. A broken foreigner walked from the shop.

My next hilarious humiliation came on a street corner with a Xinjiang cake seller. I'd seen them quite a few times in cities – just trying to sell off pieces from massive metre-long fruit and nut loaves. The previous day i'd walked past him and told him i wanted to try the product and would come back. I duly came back the next day, to the same street corner and had almost given up looking for him when he came out from an alleyway, pushing his cart. I greeted him and told him i'd come back to buy. I signalled for him to cut me off a conveniently protruding end piece. He looked a little taken aback and offered me half what i'd suggested but i told him the end piece would be fine. It didn't look like too much. What i didn't count on, never having consumed before, was how heavy the thing was. At the going rate of 50RMB a kilo, it turned out to be a 65RMB chunk. And i only had 36RMB in my wallet. So i asked him to cut it in half. No, he told me in terrible Chinese (he wasn't much better than me - Uighurs have their own, Turkic language and many can't speak Chinese), if he cuts it in half, no-one will buy the the other half. "Oh shit. Hmmm. What can we do? I don't have enough money." A sizeable crowd had gathered and had now enclosed us. Boxxy was so embarrassed she simply stepped back and melted into the onlookers. Rattled by the shame and annoyed by the crowd members' stupid, bovine movements and expressions, i told the seller, "Ok, solution: i'll give you sell" (that's the Chinese expression), "We'll stand here together until i sell it." I addressed the crowd: "You all want to buy, do you?" i said, picking up the chunk, and walked around the ring of befuddled imbeciles, waving the unwanted chunk in their faces yelling, "Buy buy buy! Good eat! Special price . . . good eat!" Jaws remained slack. "Why are you standing here?" i shouted. "You're here to buy! Buy buy buy, special price! 30 yuan!". At this point a police officer pushed through the crowd. I greeted him and asked him, "What are they looking at? None of them want to buy!" He looked at me incredulously, turned away and joined the crowd. Finally, i knew the only thing that would get rid of them – start taking pictures. This only partially succeeded. Eventually the seller, himself clearly embarrassed, took one chunk away, put it on the board, and said he would eat it. I paid him what i had for the bigger chunk and we made a break for it. Glory be.


We hadn't seen the Great Wall for about 2 weeks until we took a taxi out to see it yesterday. The taxi driver, though he'd been to Beijing, had never seen the wall despite its being only a 15 minute drive from his home.




It wasn't that we hadn't been trying though. Two days after leaving Zhongwei we camped in a desert that consisted solely of sand and vicious prickle bushes (which, in turn, consisted solely of extremely sharp prickles, which i only discovered when i tried to ride my bike on them and punctured both tyres in 10 places). That night was full of explosions in the not-too-distant distance – big ones. Their cause remained a mystery, but only until the morning. We continued riding towards the Wall for a few kilometres, but just as we were mounting the hill that should have given us our first glimpse, a green military 4WD sped past on a nearby track, honking wildly. The passenger got out and yelled at us to stop. I approached him and after a quick interrogation and investigation of our cameras, were were told to kindly vacate the desert because the army wanted to explode more bombs.




That afternoon we reached a restaurant – a concrete block shrouded in the smoke of multiple aluminium refineries. I stuck my head through the door. An man in his 50s sporting a sour expression stood inside. I inquired as to whether this 'restaurant' could cook us some food, and, without answering, he turned and gave me the iciest look imaginable, a "what in fuck's name are you doing here?". I said, "Fried rice, add vegetables and egg, can do?" Suddenly he burst out laughing, evidently amused by the simple fact i said "Fried rice, add vegetables and egg, can do?" He turned out to be the hippest, strangest old man we've met. He took us out the back to his storeroom to select our own dilapidated vegetables from their rat-eaten boxes, and soon insisted on us staying the night to share baijiu and aluminium fumes with him. Demanding we take photos of him, dressing up and endlessly primping his combover in the mirror in preparation for them and demanding i do the same, yet refusing any thoughts of a photo of him cooking; chuckling heartily practically every time I opened my mouth; insisting Boxxy take cold medicine despite her protestations that she had no such affliction – yes, this was a strange one.


As we continued the next morning the scenery became more and more dire. By the time we reached the Yellow River, it was exactly how i imagine 19th century Europe: small towns and villages (not big cities – small towns and villages becoming big cities) with factories clamouring for prime riverfront space with assured waste-pipe access, spewing forth yellow plumes that cloak the air; the echoey clanking of heavy iron bouncing down factory-walled streets; families living in tiny homes next door to factories; chains of putrid, green billabongs in the bottom of ditches; and the self-made millionaires exiting the factory gates in the most fashionable, ostentatious transport available.


We've ridden through endless cornfields (and were back among them before long). The choice faced by peasants in an industrial revolution is between the fields and the filth. And we know that most of them end up choosing the filth for the opportunities that it represents. But, as so often is the case, the direr the scenery got, the friendlier the people seemed to become. These guys, who live in their tiny shop next to a foul river, were the friendliest people we've met.



Still, peasants can in fact reap some benefits from the abovementioned ostentatious vehicles without leaving the land. The above is apparently done for the purpose of threshing by running over by passing cars. Someone should perhaps remind me to limit my consumption of local grain products.